How to Boot to Desktop in Windows 8.1

A very annoying feature of the latest release of Windows 8.1 is that as soon as you boot the PC, the start menu pops up. How dearly you wish to see your old faithful desktop as soon as the windows finished the boot ? Users have been wishing that Microsoft did something about this. There are a lot of third-party apps/software developed especially to help you boot to desktop in Windows 8. But, after the release of the latest 8.1 upgrade, the setting can be changed from within windows itself.

Mind you, this feature is available only in the Windows 8.1 and not Windows 8. You can check out our article on How to upgrade to windows 8.1 for the details on the upgrade procedure. Let’s see how to make Windows 8.1 boot to desktop.

How to make Windows 8.1 boot to desktop?

So how do we boot directly to desktop in Windows 8.1 ? It’s fairly simple. Once you are logged in to Windows, right-click on the taskbar and click on Properties.

A ‘Taskbar and Navigation properties’ dialog box will pop up.

Select the navigation tab and you will notice the ‘Start Screen’ on the bottom side of the dialog box. You have to check the box ‘When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start’ and click OK.

That it ! This small little trick will make Windows 8.1 boot to desktop on startup and I am sure you will be glad to see your good old desktop back when you start Windows.

Do give it a try and let us know if you were able to boot to desktop in Windows 8.1 in the comment section below.

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About Arpit Roy

Arpit is a die hard Chelsea F.C. fan - a true blue through and through. He is a Solutions Architect by profession and loves to blog about technology, SEO and how-to guides in order to help others. He likes playing competitive football and FIFA in his free time.